Thursday, March 07, 2013

The Ramal Extraction - Steve Perry

The Ramal Extraction

Cutter’s Wars, Book 1

Steve Perry

Ace

Military SciFi

Once part of the Galactic Union Army, Colonel Cutter now
runs his own for-profit group.Some
might call them mercenaries; others know that you get what you pay for, and
with Cutter and his group, you get the best, without a lot of red tape.On the upside, Cutter gets to pick and choose
his jobs, making sure that the ‘bad guys’ are really bad, and that the client
actually pays.On the downside, they’re
not nearly as well funded as a regular army team, so they sometimes have to get
creative.

It sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale: the daughter
of the Rajah of New Mumbai has been kidnapped just before her wedding to the
son of a neighboring rajah.Rajah Ramal,
the girl’s father, just wants his daughter back.If Cutter can eliminate the kidnappers, all
the better.The girl’s fiancé is ready
to go to war with the leader of the city-state he suspects of taking her.The first order of business is gathering
intel on the location situation.Each
member of Cutter’s team has his/her/hir own methods in the field.It’s what makes them the best.

Since this is the first installment in a new series, there’s
some groundwork to be laid, and the author has chosen a fascinating way to do
it.During the op, there’s unavoidable
downtime.During the downtime, each
member takes a turn telling a ‘war story.’These stories give insight into the characters and the surroundings.It’s the late 24th century, Earth
is hardly alone, and humans are not the only sentient species out there, so
there’s a lot of ground to cover.The
personal stories give glimpses into the book’s future-history.

Another great decision (and one I always applaud) is the use
of the Cast Of Characters at the front of the book.There’s a whole team in place when the op –
and the book – begins, so it’s quite handy to be able to refer to this to keep
everyone straight.The members are
varied and well-characterized, even at the outset.One is a non-human, giving the reader a sort
of outside look at things.Another is a
human androgyne, and everyone uses the pronouns ‘zhe’ and ‘zir’ as a matter of
course.It seems like a small detail,
but it goes a long way in immersing the reader immediately in the fictional
universe.

I’ve always felt that a lot of scifi readers skip over
military scifi because they feel they need to know about weapons or technology
to read it.Those readers are missing
some great series.I’m not up on weapons
or military strategies, but the author here, like the best military scifi
writers, writes in a way that makes it easy for readers like me to understand.If you’ve been avoiding military scifi, I’d
highly recommend giving this one a try.It’s highly character-driven, it’s the first in a series, and the pace
is very fast.If you’re already on the
military scifi train, you can’t go wrong here.